Gibson gets spanked by the Times Union

In its July 27 editorial, the Times Union has called for Rookie Congressman Chris Gibson to “put down the gun and govern.”

The TU, like the all but the most radical of his constituents, wants Gibson to stop being the Tea Party/Corporate Representative and start representing his whole district.

But it seems Gibson will have none of it, falling in line with the radial far-right freshman class in Congress; voting to kill thousands of FAA jobs in an attempt to strip transportation workers of their collective bargaining rights, focusing on symbolic votes like “light bulb free choice” and the absurd “Cut Cap and Balance” fake vote.

The TU notes that President Obama and the Democrats (much to their Progressive supporters’ dismay) have bent over backwards to meet the GOP’s demands. But as with the rest of the GOTeaParty, Gibson can’t take “yes” for an answer.

In short, the TU has called Gibson what he is – a partisan, ideological hack who will do anything, including bringing the country he claims to love, to the brink of economic disaster.

Here is the full text of the Times Union editorial:

Get off the brink; time to govern

July 27, 2011 at 6:00 am by TU Editorial Board

Our opinion: The House Republicans’ all-or-nothing approach to debt and deficit talks isn’t a negotiating position, but a prescription for gridlock.

If President Obama had come out a few months ago and said that he was willing to reduce federal spending by trillions over the next decade and cut back key social programs like Medicare and Social Security in exchange for ending some tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, many in his own party might have wondered if he had cut some secret deal with Republicans.

Yet even as Mr. Obama and many Democrats in Congress are ready to accept those very terms, compromising on many of their core positions just to secure a deal to keep this country from defaulting on its debt, House Republicans continue to dig in. While the President has been willing to risk alienating many in his party’s liberal wing, House Speaker John Boehner and his more mainstream colleagues appear to be cowed by a minority of radical freshman whose influence far exceeds their numbers.

They refuse to budge from an anti-tax, anti-government position, holding the nation and its economy hostage. The gun to America’s head is the threat of its first default in history, with potentially disastrous consequences for this country and the world.

With just days to go before the nation reaches its debt limit, it is time for them to end the brinkmanship.

It’s time for them to remember — or perhaps come out of their self-absorption and realize for the first time — that Americans didn’t elect them alone. They didn’t vote to hand the reins of government over to a relatively small bloc of ultra-conservative armchair economists.

Instead, in 2010 they left the Democrats in charge of the Senate and gave the Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives. They elected liberals, conservatives, moderates. They elected newcomers and incumbents. They elected people with different ideas of what the Constitution means, what government is for and how best to fix the economy and create jobs.

In short, they gave no one an absolute mandate.

It is time for intransigent House Republicans, from the tea partiers to the Capital Region’s Chris Gibson and the Hudson Valley’s Nan Hayworth, to accept that nobody gets to win their most extreme position in a negotiation.

It is time for them to heed conservative voices like Mickey Edwards, a former House Republican leader during the years of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Mr. Edwards has looked at what Democrats have offered and said that “If I was there, I would say, ‘My God, declare victory.’”

It is time for them to accept a plan that puts the debt limit battle to rest at least through the 2012 elections, not just patch it up for a few months and thrust it into the election season for political gain. 

And if they could stop shouting anti-tax slogans for just a little while, they might see that it’s also time to take advantage of the opportunity before them, right now, to cut the deficit that they supposedly went to Washington to trim.

That would be the responsible thing to do.

But if the Republicans aren’t up to that — if they’re determined to spend this entire session and the rest of this President’s first term doing nothing but campaigning for the next election — next year’s budget deliberations certainly offer another chance to engage in that debate, and in plenty of brinkmanship.

Right now, though, it’s time to put down the gun, step away and govern.